h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1054597.html?menu=

alien artifacts found at Tunguska. Apparently!

This really is another one of those places that just won't lie down isn;t it?

The article states that the Tunguska blast remains one of the 20th centuries greatest mysteries???... but then states that it is widely believed that a meteorite exploded over it. What mystery? In one scientific reproduction (reenactment? demonstration?... what is the exact word I'm looking for... they did it in miniature...) they even reproduced the 'dumbell' shape of standing trees by having a small explosion in motion over a miniature model forest.

It's a mystery only to those who ignore what is known because it gets in the way of their conspiracy beliefs.

"Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story."

well there is a mystery in so far as it cannot be conclusively proved what it was that went bang. IT is well recognised that something came hurtling into the atmosphere and went bang. Several witnesses saw something streak across the sky and felt / heard the bang.
Theories as to asteroid and even comet are all in circulation. But the fact is that most scientific researchers would not risk their reputation by even entertaining the notion of alien spacecraft.
Also, I am unaware of any evidence of what it was that went bang being discovered.

Well, most scientists will agree that it was probably something like an asteroid, a meteorite or a comet. But that doesn't sound like something I would call one of the greatest mysteries of the century.

I thought it was just a rather ambitious crop circle.

F

Well, it is quite a mystery. But I don´t think there is any reason to believe it could have been a spacecraft, other than because it would be real interesting. But the fact that no object or debris has ever been found is rather odd. I remember Stephen Hawking arguing that it could perhaps have been one of his baby black holes.

Well, the only real substantive argument against it being a spaceship is that it is generally accepted that no such thing exists. There's absoilutely no evidence one way or the other for the existence of alien space craft (as far as I know) so I think it deserves to be included as an outside chance.

But the most likely is the comet/asteroid since we know they hit the earth periodically, we have a good idea of their makeup and hence what would happen / does happen when they enter the atmosphere.

But that doesn;t mean it was one.

And I agree, hardly one of the greatest mysteries!
(for that I'd nominate John Major / Edwina Currie).

Ictoan, you use strange logic:

"There's absoilutely no evidence ... for the existence of alien space craft ... so I think it deserves to be included as an outside chance."

No. If there's no evidence of their existence (which you admit) and no reason to believe that they should exist (my statement), then we don't waste our time considering them.

Gnomon, you use strange quotes.

Try the full quote "There's absoilutely no evidence one way or the other for the existence of alien space craft (as far as I know) so I think it deserves to be included as an outside chance."

Key words are "one way or the other".

Ah, the dangers of selective quoting

The spaceship theory only works if you ignore the stone fragments found embedded in trees that survived the explosion... fragments which are unsurprisingly similar in composition to an asteroid.

Ictoan, I deliberately left out "one way or the other" because it is meaningless.

How can there be evidence that something nobody has ever seen doesn't exist? There might be a Quargle monster at the end of my garden. There's no evidence that there isn't. True, I've been down to the end of my garden many times and have never seen one. In fact no one has ever seen one, or has any reason to believe that such a beast is anything other than something I just made up. So let's not discount the possibility that there is one, shall we?

You've got a Quargle monster, too, Gnomon!? I thought I was the only one.













(just trying to lighten up what really should be the absolutely lightest of threads.)

Gnomon, I see your point, but don't consider that to be a fair argument. After all, nobody has ever claimed to see a Quargle monster at the end of your garden, whereas many people claim to have seen spacecraft alien to us.. as well as photo and video 'evidence'.

Being as there's nobody here who was actually at Tunguska, it will be a mystery. Mind you, even the people that were there couldn't tell exactly what it was that exploded. Mind you, again, if they had seen a big spaceship with little green men waving frantically out of the window, they would probably have been sent to some sort of mental institution.

Hi Queegle! Maybe you should get together with the Quargle; you'd make a lovely pair.

If you accept that there is evidence for the existence of alien spaceships, that changes things completely. My 'logic' was based on Ictoan's statement that there is no evidence.

Does anybody actually know where Tunguska is? I was unable to find it on any map.

You can't find it on a map becasue it isn't a place, it's a river in Siberia. The explosion site is near that river.

Posting 6:

"I remember Stephen Hawking arguing that it could perhaps have been one of his baby black holes."

These things sound dangerous, baby or not. I hope he's keeping them somewhere safe.

F

Baby black holes are also called primordial black holes. The idea is that they are very small, with about as much mass as a mountain and with a diameter about the size of an atom. Such holes can't be formed by normal gravitational collapse, as there isn't enough mass, but they might be formed in the eddies of the Big Bang.

According to Hawking, all black holes give off small amounts of energy all the time and lose mass. This process is called evaporation. The smaller they are, the faster they give off radiation until eventually they explode with a blinding flash. It has been proposed that it was one of these flashes that caused the Tunguska disaster. It doesn't explain the rocks embedded in the trees, though.

Gnomon, it isn't meaningless, since by leaving it out you completely change the meaning of my post. Something which when omitted has a significant effect on the concept being conveyed cannot be said to be meaningless.

What I said is that there is no evidence for existence and no evidence against existence. You say, and in general I agree, that you cannot have evidence of non existence (that's in general as opposed to in specific). And what I said is that that is the case here. There isn;t any.
Since there is no evidence they don't exist, and since there can't be, logically, any evidence or proof in general that they don;t exist, then saying they don;t exist is a personal preference and an exercise in tailoring the universe to ones own views. You might be right. Then again you might not. We don't know.

They certainly wouldn;t bve the first thing which common sense of the time says doesn;t exist and are then found to be existing quite happily despite what common sense may think!

I should just point out here that I am not arguing this from the point of view of a UFO believer, merely from the point of view of the logic and linguistic arguments that Gnomon raises. I think my personal beliefs in this matter can be gleaned quite easily from post 1.

Gnomon,

Whatever it was exploded a couple of hundred metres above the ground. This limits the possibilities to something which was hovering there or something which arrived at that point and then exploded. Is there some mechanism which would cause a mini black hole to detonate within a few hundred metres of the surface of another massive body? If not then for it to choose such a place to explode, presumably having arrived at high speed from space, is a remarkable coincidence.

F

No, by Hawking's theory, the hole explodes at a time based purely on its mass. It wouldn't be influenced by anything around it. So it would be a shockingly unlikely coincidence. That rules that theory out.